The New York Times reports that the character of "Angela," which was created by Neil Gaiman for the Image comic "Spawn," will appear in the Marvel miniseries "Age Of Ultron" (I'm NOT going to maintain "spoilers" when the publisher purposely chooses to run this stuff in major news sites -- though to be fair, Marvel characterises this not as a "spoiler" per se but as a "bonus").

This is rather hilarious and not a little bit snarky, especially if you consider that Spawn creator Todd McFarlane was instrumental in starting the flight of Marvel talent to Image in the early 1990s. Gaiman -- apparently no fool -- maintained joint copyright with McFarlane on Angela and a number of other characters. This inevitably led to a slew of lawsuits which eventually ended in a settlement of some sort...and Gaiman having control of Angela.

Of course, what does poor Angela have to say about all this? Does she get a say? Or is she, like Helen of Troy before her, only meant to look cute and continue to watch the Big Boys fight it out?

Angela's next stop on her Marvel tour after "Age of Ultron" will be "Guardians of the Galaxy" #5. Where she goes from there is anybody's guess -- maybe she'll restart a chapter of the "Lady Liberators."